Baviaanskloof
Everything and nothing at all
As the more observant of you may have noticed, I have been on one of my many hiatuses. And you may think it’s been because I have been enjoying a fun-filled summer, or perhaps moving house has kept me busy.
But actually, none of that is true. You see in my last segment I casually dropped a comment that turned out to be a massive mistake. It went something along the lines of:
“…my next story is about a 200km stretch of dirt road between two mountains.”
I promise, it’s there. You can go back and check if you want.
And it wasn’t as though I simply liked the sound of it at the time. It genuinely was next on my pre-thought-out list of stories to write. Only what I didn’t realise at the time was that I had no idea what I was going to say.
Neither did I have any idea the following week or the week after that. Which was strange because back in South Africa, barely a week goes by that you don’t hear of someone or other running, cycling or pushing a donkey cart across that 200km stretch of dirt known as Baviaanskloof.
So I went down to the pub, ordered a Guinness and tried to figure out what was going wrong. How was it possible that I had spent a perfectly agreeable few days traversing the kloof. A place that the guys on Dads 4×4 forum never shut up about. And yet I had absolutely nothing to say about the place?
This was exactly the sort of place that I set out to write about. And yet all I could think about was how we got stuck behind this fellow and his broken trailer for hours.
I took another sip of my Guinness.
‘I can’t write a whole story telling people not to buy trailers.’ I thought to myself.
Though seriously. Never buy a trailer.
Now, you may be asking yourself at this point, what even is Baviaanskloof? An excellent question and one that I had for the longest time wondered myself.
At its most basic, Baviaanskloof is a 200 km stretch of dirt road connecting the towns of Steyterville with Willowmore. And unless you are one of those folks on Dad’s 4×4 forum, you’re probably not queueing up to visit either of them. Though having said that, Steytlerville is actually quite a nice place.
The road runs between two mountain ranges forming a valley that at times is really quite striking. And besides a few farms along the way, that’s about it. There are no shops, no wineries, scarcely any picnic sites. We were told to look out for buffalo, but you guessed it. We didn’t see any of those either.
So what made this one of South Africa’s premier destinations?
I took the last sip of my Guinness and felt a little wobbly in my legs.
‘Well,’ I thought to myself with a little chuckle. ‘If you headed down there on a boys weekend, your wife had no chance of tracking you.”
But having gone down that road I thought it was time to call it a day at the pub and pick this up the following weekend.
Seven days went by and having made absolutely no progress on the matter I headed back to my local and took up residence on my favourite perch. Having already established there was no good reason why anyone would visit Baviaanskloof. I now needed to figure out why half the country was queuing up to do just that?
With another Guinness in hand I sat there more confused than ever.
Most South Africans don’t own a 4×4, the one thing required for the authorities to allow you through the Kloof.
‘So why did virtually every man, women and child in South Africa praise Baviaans, when I knew damn well that virtually no one in the country had actually been there?’
I pondered this question until I once again felt wobbly in the legs. Then, having achieved nothing except enjoying a pleasant pint of Guinness I once again headed home and left it there for another week.
By this stage pints of Guinness were getting expensive.
So, feeling that it was time to wrap up this story I instead poured myself a stiff whiskey and sat down to enjoy the view out of my massive sliding doors. It was late in the afternoon. The sun was low in the sky and that’s when it happened. That was the moment when I remembered why everyone spoke about Baviaans with such reverence. And I remember this picture below.
This is what made Baviaanskloof so special. It was its complete lack of shops, cafes and distilleries. The ability to enjoy this wilderness with your mates. To enjoy a drink and the smell of boerewors on the braai.
To feel a million miles away from civilisation. No text messages or phone calls to distract you from just enjoying another lamb chop.
Make no mistake. It’s sometimes hard to find a reason why, but Baviaanskloof is a truly special place indeed. If you have the opportunity. I would definitely give it a chance.
Take care, and see you next time.
P.S. No, I’m not giving any clues as to what’s coming up next.
